Saturday, October 14, 2017

Don’t quit – instead, get to work on a 25th Amendment solution

I
can understand why you feel Washington is a place of “petty nonsense,” as you
said Wednesday when you called a news conference to rebut charges that you
called Trump a moron last summer after a meeting of national security officials
at the Pentagon.

I’m
also reasonably sure you called him a moron, which doesn’t make Washington any
less petty. You probably called him a moron because almost all of us out here
in the rest of America routinely call him that.

But
you’re right: There are far more important issues than the epithet you likely
used to describe your boss.

On
the other hand, your calling him a moron wouldn’t itself have mushroomed into a
headline issue – even in petty Washington – if there weren’t deep concerns
about the President’s state of mind to begin with.

I
bet every cabinet secretary has from time to time called his boss a moron. I
was a cabinet secretary once, and although I don’t recall ever saying Bill
Clinton was a moron, I might have thought it, especially when I found out about
Monica Lewinsky. But Bill Clinton was no moron.

The
reason your moronic comment about Trump made the headlines is that Trump really
is a moron, in the sense you probably meant it: He’s impulsive, mercurial,
often cruel, and pathologically narcissistic. Some psychologists who have
studied his behavior have concluded he’s a sociopath.

Washington
is petty, but it’s not nonsensical. It latches on to gaffes only when they
reveal something important. As journalist Michael Kinsley once said, “A gaffe
is when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to
say.”

Face
it. You are Secretary of State – the nation’s chief diplomat – under a
president who’s dangerously nuts.

Last
weekend, for example, Trump publicly said you were wasting your time trying to open
talks with North Korea. Does he have a better idea? Any halfway rational
president would ask his Secretary of State to try to talk with Kim Jong-Un.

And
there’s Iran. You and Defense Secretary James Mattis have both stated the
nuclear agreement should be retained. That, too, is only rational. The
International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran has been honoring the agreement.
Without it, Iran would restart its nuclear program.

But
Trump is on the verge of decertifying the agreement in order to save face (in
the 2016 campaign he called it an “embarrassment to America”) and further
puncture Barack Obama’s legacy. His narcissism is endangering the world.

You
tried to mediate the dispute between Qatar and its Arab neighbors. That, too,
was the reasonable thing to do.

But
then Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner sided with the United Arab
Emirates, where they have business interests. Less than one hour after you
called for a “calm and thoughtful dialogue” between Qatar and its neighbors,
Trump blasted Qatar for financing terrorism. That was also nuts.

You
are rightly appalled at Trump’s behavior. I can understand why you distanced
yourself when Trump blamed “both sides” for violence at a white supremacist
rally in Charlottesville. And why you were horrified when Trump gave a wildly
partisan speech to the Boy Scouts of America, which you once headed.

Given
all this, I’m not surprised to hear that you’ve talked about resigning, but
that Mattis and John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, have talked you out
of it.

I
urge you not to resign. America and the world need sane voices speaking into
the ear of our Narcissist-in-Chief.

As
Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Foreign
Relations Committee said recently, it’s you, Mattis, and Kelly who “help
separate our country from chaos.” I don’t think Corker was referring to chaos
abroad.

Let
Trump fire you if he wants to. That would further reveal what a moron he is.

But
if you really did want to serve the best interests of this nation, there’s
another option you might want to consider.

Quietly
meet with Mattis, Kelly, and Vice President Pence. Come up with a plan for
getting most of the cabinet to join in a letter to Congress saying Trump is
unable to discharge the duties of his office.

Under
the 25th Amendment, that would mean Trump is fired.

ROBERT B. REICH is Chancellor's
Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and
Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as
Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named
him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century.
He has written fourteen books, including the best sellers
"Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and"Beyond
Outrage," and, his most recent, "Saving Capitalism." He is also
a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause,
a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the
award-winning documentary, INEQUALITY FOR ALL.